As I mentioned in an earlier post I am going to closely follow Candy Brauer of MyBlessedHome’s series on An Understandable History of the Bible by Samuel Gipp.
Last week Dr. Gipp promised us that we would be presented with “facts.”
“This book is filled from end to end with FACTS that are fully documented and they bring the whole Bible version issue into clear-cut focus. There are no “gray” sections to it, it is all black and white.”
Candy Brauer also stated:
In the book, he will clearly back up those statements with FACTS.
This week however, as we delve into the first chapter, the facts were not forthcoming. In fact the first chapter is not an academic or historical piece at all, but read rather like a fictional piece or the outline of a play.
Actually I was very much in agreement with the first page of this chapter. In those paragraphs, Dr. Gipp describes the wonder of nature, from the falling of a seed that grows into a tree, to the creatures in the air and sea, to our very bodies. He marvels at the wonder of creation, its complexity and how it all points to the existence of God. I have absolutely no problems with those paragraphs and in fact they are very Catholic in their understanding.
I have no problem with the second section too entitled, Where is God?
But wait. If there is Something up there, if there is a Supreme Being, He must know us! He must know what is happening on this earth. He must know our problems and have the answers for them. And if this is so, and He sees our helpless state, He is indebted to us, His creatures. As our Creator, He must help us with our troubles, assist us through this life, and see to it that we find a way to reach Him. He must communicate.
I would argue that God doesn’t HAVE to communicate. But rather He chooses too. Nonetheless, I have no problems with that section other than the conclusion that God has to communicate with us. I also do not believe that Dr. Gipp gives any substantive reason that makes it imperative that God communicate with us at all. God doesn’t need us. We need Him. I don’t think that section is very fleshed out.
Instead of giving us a substantive “fact filled” persuasive work on why God chooses to communicate with us, Dr. Gipp switches gears and goes into the realm of fiction. Ordinarily I would have no problem with that either except that both Dr. Gipp and Candy promised us substantive facts! At this point none are forthcoming.
In this fictional work, a figure is coming towards us shouting, “Make straight the way of the Lord.” Is it Elisha? Isaiah? John the Baptist? Dr. Gipp doesn’t say. The fictional new believer in this piece then asks this profit to tell him about the Creator to which the prophet replies:
“Tell you? You have no need that I tell you, for it is written right here in this Book. For if all you ever knew about God was what I said, there would be no way to verify it. But if God is God, He must put His Word in writing, so that we may have it long after His prophets are gone.”
Um… scripture and verse where any of the prophets handed over a “book” and said it was to be used for verification purposes! I couldn’t find a verse in the bible that said “trust but verify!”
The next paragraph was sillier than the first.
Then he pulls from his belongings a volume of a book. We look at it. Writing! Our God writes!
I’m pretty sure at this point we have left our quest for facts and are now fully stuck in the fiction section.
The next section is entitled “The Questioner” although I think we can call it “In the Land of Logical Fallacies.”
Our fictional new believer asks why the one questioning the “book” doesn’t just “give in and believe it” and prophet explains it is because of “pride.”
Apparently, if you don’t believe a biblical prophet pulled a book out of his belongings (centuries before the printing press) and said, “Here is all you need to know about God in this book,” then you are full of pride.”
I’d say if someone reads this piece and doesn’t question the writer’s motives they are severely lacking in critical thinking skills.
The next two sections are a redundant reworking or the previous two sections.
Candy posts the following comments.
In this chapter we were taken on a little time trip. This was before the Bible was so easy to get.
No kidding! Considering the printing press didn’t exist in biblical times!
Our character was then introduced to a street preacher, who introduced him to an ancient copy of the Bible. This Bible was before chapter and verse divisions, and was hand-written.
I think she’s assuming a lot. The book in the first paragraph sets the scene as being “in primitive times.”
It then goes on to say
We can call to the heavens. We can climb the mountains in an attempt to be nearer. We can pray. But in all of this, we can only send words in one direction. He must communicate with us! He must send words to us. He must establish reliable communications with us. But how? Suddenly it happens. As we walk down the road toward home, far down in the distance we see a figure. That figure is shouting and causing a stir. He has an air of excitement about him. As we draw nearer we can hear him shouting, and as we get closer still we can make out what he is saying.
It is her own extrapolation that this is a “street preacher” as well as that it was occurring after the invention of the printing press. If this is a hand written copy, I guarantee no one would be walking around with a “volume in their belongings” Either Candy is unaware of this or she simply isn’t reading carefully. I suspect she has not done very much historical study outside of Chick publications.
I have something to interject here: Many people wonder how Christians could have read and followed the Bible before the invention of the printing press. Many people think that there were no Bibles in common language available pre-Wycliffe. Both thoughts are misconceptions. Some museums hold copies of Bibles that were handwritten before the first Wycliffe Bible ever came on the scene.
At which point I would hope anyone doing a critical study on Candy’s piece would ask themselves how many bibles were written in the various vernaculars prior to the printing press and also how many people were literate enough to read them?
A person need only borrow his neighbor’s Bible and handwrite himself a copy. Tedious? No, it was a privilege. In fact, after one was done making their copy of the Bible, they knew so much more of God’s Word than the common Christian in this century does.
Uh… okay but it usually took the Monks who worked on this at least ten months to copy one bible,and they were supported by their monastic communities and didn’t need to worry about stuff like growing and gathering food! They were also literate.
Also, part of the function of Christian churches was to get the Bible to the common person. Even in the dark ages and other Roman Catholic fiascos, (sic) Christians still had access to the Bible in their language. Even when the Roman Catholic church forbade the Bible to be spread around in the common tongue, on pain of death, the Word of God still traveled to seeking Christians underground.
I write this rebuttal from Rev. Henry Graham’s Where we Got the Bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church.
(2) Now one could go on at any length accumulating evidence as to the fact of monks and priests reproducing and transmitting copies of the Bible from century to century, before the days of Wycliff and Luther; but there is no need, because I am not writing a treatise on the subject, but merely adducing a few proofs of my assertions, and trying to show how utterly absurd is the contention that Rome hates the Bible, and did her best to keep it a locked and sealed book and even to destroy it throughout the Middle Ages. Surely nothing but the crassest ignorance or the blindest prejudice could support a theory so flatly contradicted by the simplest facts of history. The real truth of the matter is that it is the Middle Ages which have been a closed and sealed book to Protestants, and that only now, owing to the honest and patient researches of impartial scholars amongst them, are the treasures of those grand centuries being unlocked and brought to their view. It is this ignorance or prejudice which explains to me a feature that would be otherwise unaccountable in the histories of the Bible written by non-Catholics. I have consulted many of them, and they all, with hardly an exception, either skip over this period of the Bible’s existence altogether or dismiss it with a few off-hand references. They jump right over from the inspired writers themselves, or perhaps from the fourth century, when the Canon was fixed, to John Wycliff, ‘The Morning Star of the Reformation’, leaving blank the intermediate centuries, plunged, as they imagine, in worse than Egyptian darkness. But I ask—Is this fair or honest? Is it consistent with a love of truth thus to suppress the fact, which is now happily beginning to dawn on the more enlightened minds, that it was the monks and clergy of the Catholic Church who, during all these ages, preserved, multiplied, and perpetuated the Sacred Scriptures? The Bible on its human side is a perishable article. Inspired by God though it be, it was yet, by the Providence of God, written on perishable parchment with pen and ink; liable to be lost or destroyed by fire, by natural decay and corruption, or by the enemies, whether civilised or pagan, that wasted and ravaged Christendom by the sword, and gave its churches and monasteries and libraries to the flames. Who, I ask, but the men and women, consecrated to God by their vows and devoted to a life of prayer and study in monasteries and convents, remote from worldly strife and ambition—who but they saved the written Word of God from total extinction, and with loving and reverent care reproduced its sacred pages, to be known and read of all, and to be handed down to our own generation, which grudges to acknowledge the debt it owes to their pious and unremitting labours?
Candy goes on:
I venture to theorize that before the printing press, the common Christian actually knew the Bible BETTER than most Christians today do – by a long shot. The Bible used to be revered. Now, sadly, it’s often a dust collector on the coffee table.
What the common man, the laborer unable to read or write knew about the bible then he got from his local or traveling priest. He knew it from the windows that told the stories in the beautiful churches. He knew it because his parents handed it on to him.
Moving on… the character in the story meets a Christian who has been heavily steeped in liberal theology.
Well that’s Candy’s own extrapolation as well. The book doesn’t say anything about liberal theology and that is not even implied. Apparently Mrs. Brauer intends to re-write the book as she studies it.
This chapter was devoid of the facts that were promised. Sadly I believe next week will be more of the same.
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